The Fox and the Wolf
by Trucido
Summary: Chapter 1 of an ongoing work. An abandoned Imperial garrison, a missing prisoner, and a Dark Eldar raid


The locals refused to go near the place, even as guides, and we were forced to find it from a set of outdated maps. Many of the roads around it had been destroyed, rockfalls from the mountains wiping out long stretches of the road, and in at least one instance covering over a guard station. We saw many of the guard stations, squat concrete bunkers painted a dark gray to match the local rock. All of them were in working order; one even had its heavy bolters still leaning back in their mountings, but there was no evidence of either the guards or a struggle. One of the Sisters brought us an Imperial Guard helmet she had found underneath a bed, the inside of it coated with a layer of fine gray ash, and a single shrapnel pockmark on the side.  
  
Inquisitor Medvedev was busy with a small data-entry tablet, taking notes at a furious pace, sniffing the air and looking under everything. Occasionally he would stop and turn full circle, scowling at the abandoned posts. I made my own cursory circuit, before ordering the Rhinos full of Battle Sisters to move up the trail and secure positions further forward, within a few miles of the fortress itself.  
  
We rode up to meet them in the Inquisitor's own Rhino, noting that there were no good positions to menace the fortress from. Nearby peaks and ridge-lines had been leveled, giving the artillery in the fortress a clear line of fire and a distinct height advantage over a twenty kilometer radius. From here, it still looked unassailable, but no fire came from the bunkers and turrets. If the enemy held it, they were merely biding their time.  
  
  
  
We had come to Phrycia at the behest of the planetary governor and the local Adeptus Arbites. The message was terse, with a fearful element to it: all contact had been lost with the Imperial Guard Garrison, the 312th Kurovasan Regiment. Immediate investigation and reinforcement were requested. All of the local officials had no history of Heresy, the commander of the 312th Kurovasan was noted as a devoted servant of the Emperor, as was the planetary governor. We were dispatched, the Inquisitor and I, to conduct an Inquisition, with a force of Sisters of Battle included in case of infestation.  
  
The planetary governor had no information. His own small contingent of Guardsmen were ill-equipped to assault the fortress. He claimed not to have dispatched any scouts, for fear of corruption, though I could see in the faces of his commanders that they were hiding something. I had no way of knowing how much they knew, but they insisted that their own forces had to be held back to defend the cities on the Southern continent despite their professed ignorance of the nature of the danger. I had the advantage, in any case. I knew, in the most general sense, why the 312th Kurovasan was stationed at the Emperor's Shield 213.  
  
  
  
The road up had been cleared by explosives, courtesy of a squad of Phrycian engineers. We arrived at the forward positions to find Mr. Volk waiting for us. Mr. Volk is my associate. His position, as is mine, is ill-defined in the Imperial hierarchy. Suffice to say we are not subordinate to Inquisitor Medvedev; our superiors expect a strict monopoly on our reports and services.  
  
"They seem to be all dead, Mr. Lisetz," said Mr. Volk.  
  
"Or turned," I said, eyeing the forbidding bulk of Shield 213. "In either case, we need to be up there before nightfall." I raised the Canoness Anna on the commnet, and ordered her to advance on the fortress. She acknowledged with the minimum of required politesse, and there was an edge to her voice. Taking this fortress, if it was defended, would be a bloodbath. I would have told her she needn't worry, but that would only have raised difficult questions. We boarded our own Rhino again, and I ordered the driver to advance at flank speed up the road. He gave me a look of mixed desperation and disgust, but followed the order without comment.  
  
We were at the front gate by the time the Sisters arrived, and had already overridden the controls to open them. Leaving the vehicles with drivers at points outside the wall, we entered with three squads of Sisters.  
  
  
  
Shield 213 was just as abandoned as the guard stations. It smelled of clean metal and plastics. The Inquisitor began his routine again, but he seemed even more worried now. He could, of course, imagine things capable of emptying an entire Emperor's Shield Fortress, but they were not things he wanted to meet. I left him to his own devices, and followed Mr. Volk. Volk strode on ahead, eyes narrow, stopping to sniff the air or touch a wall every so often. He stopped at junctions, choosing his route carefully. At a data terminal he stopped, removed a small metal badge from behind the keypad, and handed it to me before striding off again.  
  
The badge was a small brass unit emblem, almost identical to the standard of the 312th Kurovasan regiment, but with special Imperial honors. I pocketed it, and continued to follow. Every turn took us a little deeper into the fortress, whose layout was slightly different from the standard plan that all Emperor's Shield fortresses followed. This one was more concentric, to begin with, designed to focus on defense of a single interior space. Mr. Volk found a stairwell, and led me down them with no concern for who might be listening, his heavy boots ringing loudly on the metal stairs.  
  
In the hallway beyond, Mr. Volk stopped abruptly. Ahead, I could see a door ajar. We had not yet come upon an open portal, or any sign of untidiness in the entire fortress. I stopped behind him. Volk fished about in a pocket of his heavy black coat and came up with a slightly bent cigarette.  
  
"Mr. Lisetz, would you do the honors?" he asked, jamming the cigarette between his lips and patting his pockets for a light.  
  
"I wouldn't dream of it, Mr. Volk. You have led us here, the honor should belong to you alone," I answered, offering him a match from my vest pocket.  
  
"If you could smell what has been there, you wouldn't go in for any amount of money," he said, "So I will wait here, Mr. Lisetz, and hope you are kind enough to spare my senses."  
  
"Ignorance is bliss?" I sighed as theatrically as I could, and marched through the door.  
  
  
  
The room was roughly four by four meters, with a small metal chair in one corner and a table with a pair of books on it in the other. Besides that, it could have been an abattoir after a crate of grenades went off. Blood coated every inch of the walls thickly, gathering in places and dripping in coagulated stalactites down from the ceiling. Unidentifiable bits of flesh and bone were mixed into the horrific red-black plaster, with the rainbow effluvium of shredded organs mixed to a brown muck on the floor. I suppressed a retch as the smell hit me.  
  
"You can't smell even half of it," Volk said, his face a mask of control, trying to stop his gorge rising. He turned and carefully spat a lump of bile out into the corridor.  
  
There was another door on the other side of the room, a huge armored thing with hinges suitable for anchoring an Imperial cruiser and a clear plasteel viewing window bolted into the center. It was a door that could have withstood a direct hit from a siege gun, and something had ripped it off its hinges. I prodded with door with the tip of my boot. I had buckled outwards, driven off its hinges and bent by a terrific blow from the inside. There was a circle of slagged steel a hand's width in diameter at the center, the focus of the blow. It was shiny, as if melted and reformed under immense pressure.  
  
The room the door had sealed was a depressing ferrocrete cube, spotlessly clean but with a lingering odor of long habitation by someone with poor hygiene. There was barely enough room for a tall man to stand, or take a long step in either direction. The only furniture, if it could be called that, was a piece of ferrocrete jutting out from the wall, large enough for one man to sit with his back hard against the wall.  
  
"Whose room was this, Mr. Volk?" I asked, though I had a depressing sense that I knew the answer already.  
  
"A very dangerous someone, Mr. Lisetz. Or a very dangerous thing."  
  
  
  
There was nothing more in the cube to tell us anything. The books in the antechamber were an Imperial hymnal, ruined by long soaking in blood, and a notebook, handwritten in an archaic, sprawling script. I was shocked to find a handwritten document. They turned up now and again, mostly in the hands of cultists and conspirators who had an anachronistic bent, or feared to have their work intercepted by the Tech Priests or Inquisitors. This book was laid out in code, each plastic sheet a numbered list with bulleted subheadings and short entries; the longest one I found no more than a page. I wiped the pages and cover clean as best I could and stored both books in a plastic bag in my satchel.  
  
We were standing in the corridor outside, with me lost in thought while Mr. Volk frowned and fiddled with his still-unlit cigarette, when my comm bead crackled in my ear.  
  
"Inquisitor Lisetz?" It was the Canoness Anna, who was directing her squads in a careful sweep of the fortress.  
  
"Mr. Lisetz, please, Canoness. Can I help you?"  
  
"We have found something you should see."  
  
  
  
The squad of Sisters surrounding the Canoness was obviously nervous, and they had deployed themselves to hold the small section of corridor they occupied against a determined assault. I suspected the other two squads had been set up at nearby critical junctures as well. The Canoness and two of her Celestians were standing, grim-faced, at the open door of a storage closet. Volk immediately frowned and pulled out the match I had given him, struck it on a thumbnail, and lit his cigarette, muttering all the time about the smell. Chances were he could guess what was in that closet.  
  
The face that stared out from the back wall of the closet was fixed in a rictus grin of pain and terror, pale, waxy and bloodless beneath a topknot of coal-black hair. The whole body hung limply, feet dangling a few inches off the ground. Its crimson armor seemed designed more for ceremony than protection or concealment, but the morbidly pale skin was untouched save for the short length of leather-bound grip that protruded just beneath the ribcage; a falchion, by the looks of it the victim's own, pinning him to the wall. The ferrocrete wall.  
  
"An Eldar pirate," said the Canoness, voice detached and clinical. I nodded.  
  
"Wych," Mr. Volk added, from his position at the other end of the corridor. The Inquisitor appeared then, walking purposefully towards us between two Sisters. He nearly elbowed me out of the way, then stopped, hands on hips, to examine the corpse.  
  
"I suspected as much. They have been known to take entire garrisons," he said, mouth set in a thin smile of satisfaction.  
  
"Not Shield Fortresses," I said, "They prefer raiding to besieging. There are no apparent breeches here."  
  
"Treachery, then," the Inquisitor said dismissively, still examining the dead Wych. The Canoness shook her head, and began reeling off a list of facts  
  
"The magazines are full. There are only a few weapons missing from stores, which would have been with the on-duty sentries. The vehicles are still in their parks, the gates are still sealed. There is no evidence of struggle or death," Volk snorted at this, "And no stores, valuables, or weapons were taken."  
  
"Lastly," I added, "Eldar pirates are not known for cleaning up after themselves."  
  
"So what do you propose?" said the irritated Inquisitor. "An entire garrison deserting as one? A mass heresy?" He sounded as if the last idea actually sounded good to him, but even the zealous Inquisitor in him knew that heretics would have held the fortress, or at least taken some of the weapons with them.  
  
"A mass desertion in the face of a pirate attack?" the Canoness ventured helpfully.  
  
"No. They're quick. If pirates penetrated the fortress, the garrison would have had no time to run, and they would have had no warning before the attack. In any case, the regiment here had battle honors. They were steady veterans." I offered up the small badge I had found. The Canoness and Inquisitor both regarded it.  
  
"It is a unit citation for conspicuous bravery. These men faced things as bad or worse than heretics before," said the Canoness. "They would not have run, or deserted."  
  
"I suggest that you bring up men to hold this fortress, and conduct as thorough an investigation here as you can. Mr. Lisetz and I would like to have a look at the terrain."  
  
"I will send a squad to accompany you," the Canoness offered. I considered refusing, but thought better of it.  
  
"Two or three sisters will do, Canoness," I said, smiling as best I could.  
  
  
  
In the end, she assigned us three hard-faced Celestians, Sisters Clio, Thalia, and Urania. They seemed reliable enough, in the unthinking way of holy warriors, and were little bothered by the empty fortress. Heresy and Chaos created such things, they knew, and to be surprised at them merely was an advantage to the enemy. Mr. Volk didn't like having them along, but he was not one for being outnumbered and vulnerable, either. He stopped complaining, save for a few pointed remarks about zealots and quick trigger fingers.  
  
There were only a few routes from Shield 213 into the mountains. The main one was down a road cut into the side of the mountain, zig-zagging down the least of the slopes into a valley, where the road continued to lead past the guardhouses, and eventually over a land bridge to the heavily populated southern continent. There was no easy way into the mountains themselves this way, though. Two more footpaths leading along precarious metal bridges allowed patrols up onto the surrounding peaks and into a network of well-concealed pathways and storage depots that would allow the defenders ample opportunity to harass besiegers.  
  
"You have to respect the 312th's commander," Volk said, "He really had himself well dug-in here." I only nodded. The defenses were really too elaborate for an Emperor's Shield. That line of fortresses was usually a relative simple one, designed to blunt an assault by masses of irregular troops: rebels, cultists, Tyranids, any army that lacked overwhelming artillery or orbital support. Most often, Shields were found protecting loyal populations from guerilla attack. Why had one been built here, in the mountains, where even heretics were smart enough not to go?  
  
  
  
Without any particular reason or destination, we set out on eastern footpath, crossing the well-maintained bridge and starting up the face of the nearest mountain on a winding footpath. There were some marks of it having been used within the last week. Whatever troops had been sent up here were competent mountaineers, but made little effort to cover up their tracks. Familiar prints from standard issue Imperial Guard boots were everywhere, and we came upon several discarded ration wrappers within an hour.  
  
"How many do you suppose came this way?" I asked Volk when we stopped to catch our breath in the thin, cold air. He had crouched and was hugging his knees, a sour look on his face.  
  
"Ten, fifteen. Just a patrol, looking for something. They didn't come back."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"There's no return trail." Mr. Volk can be hard to read sometimes, and I pondered for a moment what he meant by trail. Some might call me a bloody fool, and say that he obviously meant there were no footprints coming back down the mountain. The problem was, there were. The tracks from years of regular patrols were all over, moving in every direction, a few times even up old rows of pitons straight up the side of the mountain. Mr. Volk offered no enlightenment, simply repeating that there was no return trail and becoming steadily more agitated with every step further up the mountain.  
  
  
  
Phrycia's star was well into the sky, halfway through the Phrycian day, roughly 15 standard hours when we found our first supply cache. Clio literally stumbled over it while investigating a small cave in the mountainside. The cave itself appeared to be artificial, built with the elaborate caution and concealment that engineers love, and that shows up like a beacon to careful observers. It had once held rations, battery packs, ammunition, and a few spare weapons. The rations had been ransacked, with shredded packs and bits of food everywhere. It appeared that most had been carried off after the initial frantic feast. A few of the ammunition crates had been broken open and spilled out, and the lasguns had been cracked open with rocks.  
  
"Took the food, left the weapons. Why'd they destroy them?" asked Thalia, apparently puzzled at any person who would not want a few extra lasguns or ammunition. Volk just fingered a bolter round and shot me meaningful looks.  
  
"The stink of them is all over this cave," he said, disgust dripping from every word.  
  
"Lead the way, Mr. Volk. Perhaps this will be enlightening. Sisters, if you would be so kind as to make yourselves ready for unpleasantness." I moved my own chainsword into a more accessible position and drew my bolt pistol. Mr. Volk spat on the rocks, levered himself up, and drew a bolt pistol for each hand.  
  
We made our way out of the cave and up the trail another two hundred meters, then over a slight rise in the mountainside. Weaving behind boulders, we came to the rim of a large crater, relic of some meteorite impact or weapons test. Volk gestured for silence and caution. I ordered the Sisters to circle around to the side of the crater, and come over the top when I clicked the comms once. As clearly as I could without speaking, I indicated that prisoners were preferable to corpses, to the point that I might generate a few corpses of my own should they shoot without pressing reason. The Sisters moved off at a silent trot, watching the surrounding terrain carefully for some sign of ambush. Volk had no such concerns. He crouched, mouth slightly open, eyes hooded in concentration, at the lip of the crater. I moved up beside him and a resolute look came over his face. He checked his bolters again, and I drew my chainsword. Without no more warning than a nod, Mr. Volk leapt up, and I followed right behind him him.  
  
Seated in a spot smoothed out from the near side of the crater were four figures in blood-red armor, the same color as the dead wych we had found. All had long hair, loose or in a topknot, all a lurid purple color that I hoped was the result of dye. The Sisters came up over the rim roughly opposite, just far enough to draw beads on the startled Eldar pirates. One, who wore the ornate shoulder pads of a Sybarite, reached with inhuman speed for the pistol beside him. I loosed a single round, which shattered his chestplate and threw him in a heap on the rocks. The others, slower, were scrambling for their stacked rifles when Volk shouted something at them in a strange language, alternately lilting and grating by turns. They hesitated. Volk fired a warning shot and shouted again. The Eldar looked at each other, then slowly crossed their hands in front of their bodies. I scrambled down the slope, kicking away the pile of rifles. Most of them carried one or more wicked knives, but I had no intention of getting close enough to disarm them.  
  
"They look like they've been through Hell and back, Mr. Lisetz," said Mr. Volk. I was forced to agree. They were filthy beyond belief, their armor chipped, broken and discolored. The splinter rifles bore signs of hard use, and I saw no evidence of extra ammunition. They had a few small bundles of pillaged Imperial rations, but nothing else. I looked at their faces, and saw unaccustomed defeat, the terrible confusion of the arrogant and cruel when they have been crushed by powers far beyond them. These beasts had been whipped long before we arrived, and driven out here into the wilderness in defeat.  
  
Volk snarled something at them. I could not identify the alien tones, but assumed that they were interrogative. None responded.  
  
"All right, where's the rest of you?" They shifted a little uneasily at that. One grinned, showing a mouthful of fangs.  
  
"Somehow I think this plan could have been thought through much more thoroughly," I said. They were whipped dogs, but savage fighters and cornered to boot.  
  
"I think we should disarm them, Mr. Lisetz."  
  
"I think you should disarm them, Mr. Volk." At that he pursed his lips, and looked over to the bewildered Sisters, watching us from the crater rim. He seemed to reach a conclusion.  
  
"Yes," he said, sounding satisfied, and then shot the two Eldar closest to him. The last one lurched as he started forward, then collapsed as Volk's third shot took him in the left leg. He collapsed in a snarling heap, Volk shouting at him in that language again. I never mastered the Eldar tongue, or the corrupted dialect the pirates use, but the meaning was as clear as crystal. The wounded pirate shot us a foul look and began peeling off his battered armor. When he was down to a black bodysuit, Volk snarled again, and the pirate pulled a knife from a hidden sheath and tossed it away. Volk barked an order, the pirate snapped a response. There was a tense moment, then the pirate scowled and threw away a tiny stilleto-like thing he had been holding in his right hand.  
  
The Sisters made their way cautiously down into the crater as I bound the unresisting Eldar. We moved out at a jog-trot, out of the crater and back down the side of the mountain to reach the small cache cave. Thalia and Urania took up positions by the entrance, watching the patrol path, while Clio arranged herself behind the prisoner, bolter pointed at his back, well out of the prisoner's reach, should he attempt to fight his way out. We left him propped against the wall, positioning ourselves between him and the entrance.  
  
Mr. Volk spoke the language of the Eldar very well, something I had never quite managed. I removed from my pack a hand-sized piece of metal and plastic with a narrow black screen. It was a translator, an invaluable and rare piece of equipment that I had gone to great lengths to secure. I flicked it on with a flash of phosphor green technoglyphs, then nodded to Mr. Volk when it displayed 'Ready.'  
  
Using the translator was difficult- it operated on a delay of a few seconds, and I had to read the translation from the screen, making it difficult to watch the subject during his responses. I would have to trust Mr. Volk to pick up on any nuances of the conversation.  
  
"When did you take the fortress?" Mr. Volk asked. The Eldar blinked and looked confused.  
  
"We didn't attack a fortress."  
  
"So what are you doing running around these mountains?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"You don't know. So the four of you just decided on a holiday in the hills?"  
  
"No. We came for slaves." The statement was matter-of-fact, as if he had said they were going out to buy bread.  
  
"Do you see any potential slaves here?" The Eldar grimaced at that, but recovered, and gave everyone in the cave an appraising look.  
  
"Not many," he finally said.  
  
"What were you doing here, then?"  
  
"Following the Dracon," said the Eldar, becoming irritated, "What else would I be doing?"  
  
"Where is the Dracon now?"  
  
"Gone. Eaten."  
  
"What do you mean?" At this the Eldar became angry, but his anger seemed focused not on us, but on the subject of discussion.  
  
"We were supposed to take one of the cities. Weak, soft, full of slaves and trophies." I wondered briefly at what the word the translator paraphrased as 'trophies' meant, but thought better of it. "When we had slipped past the orbital pickets, the Dracon began to become irrational. Instead of the cities, we landed in these accursed mountains. Dracon Cthan was acting stranger and stranger, but his Incubi made sure we followed his orders. They were first to die when it came, bastards.  
  
"He marched us through several mountain passes. He didn't seem to know where he was going, but we kept circling something. The third squad banded together and tried to overthrow him, but he conducted elaborate ritual torture/execution them in front of us. He was still our leader. We had to abandon our vehicles after that, and it was another day marching to find the valley. We could see a fortress from there. Is that what you meant? We didn't attack it. We found some tainted ones in the valley. They were very afraid, and they died like frightened cattle. Not even worth taking as slaves. The Dracon took them all. He didn't leave a scrap even for his Incubi.  
  
"He forced us to camp there that night, within view and reach of that fortress. Stupid to wait like that. My officer went to talk to the others, they decided they would have to band together to kill him. Even Mahaz, the Dracon's chief of bodyguards agreed to stand aside so they could challenge him. We went to see him, but never got the chance. While we gathered men and weapons, he took his bodyguards and the wyches and disappeared, leaving Mahaz gutted, denotes extensive/thorough in front of the camp. We had no idea of what to do. Our transports were far away, and all of us suspected that the Dracon had already taken or disabled them. We decided to rest for a few hours, then set out to check on the transports.  
  
"While we rested, the tainted ones came again, with strong servants of Chaos. The little worms came from the ground, out of the mountains, and they were all over. They were weak, but their masters were strong. We were waiting near a quick escape route from the valley, and we ran."  
  
"Draw me a map to this valley," ordered Mr. Volk, after a pause for thought. The pirate began scratching in the dirt and explaining, while Volk watched and nodded. I copied the map onto my data tablet while Volk hashed out the details of the story with the prisoner. When Mr. Volk had finished questioning him, we moved the pirate to the back of the cave and left two sisters watching him. Mr. Volk and I exited the cave and found a secluded spot on the rockface above.  
  
"What does he mean, tainted ones?" I asked. Mr. Volk pursed his lips.  
  
"Most often, it's a name for human cultists who follow Khorne or Nurgle. They don't make much distinction among other species, though I'm certain in this instance he's referring to a force of human cultists."  
  
"What does 'little worms from the ground' mean?"  
  
"I really can't say," Mr. Volk said, frowning thoughtfully and tugging at his lower lip. "They have a very strange way of working with metaphors. 'Worms from the ground' could be simply a name for a particular species of invertebrate near his home, a description for humans, anything. Learning their language is not particulary difficult, learning their idiom can be impossible. I think it might have just been an insult."  
  
"This is not good news, in any case. There is the taint of Chaos here, after the Inquisition gave them a clean bill of health several times. Could you get any idea of how deep the infestation is? Is it simply Cultists?" Mr. Volk shook his head.  
  
"The words he used could include traitor legionaries, smaller demons, or simply powerful cultists."  
  
"We may yet be able to spare this world the Exterminatus, but we need more information." With that, we returned to the cave to collect the Sisters. As we made to leave, the Eldar pirate watched us with hard eyes and the barest hint of an icy smile. I led the Sisters out and down the path, while Mr. Volk held back a moment. Ten meters down the trail, we heard the crack of a bolt pistol, then Mr. Volk strode out of the small cavern, hurrying to catch up.  
  
  
  
I was personally dismayed by the new development. It would have been bad enough had Eldar pirates simply appeared and executed their typical bloodthirsty rampage, but they had some other purpose in mind, if the prisoner could be trusted that far. If he was to be believed, the forces of Chaos were loose on Phrycia, as well as an unstable Dracon, and either one or both could be responsible for the destruction of an entire Imperial garrison.  
  
"First, we must put the defenses on alert. The Southern continent is vulnerable if a powerful Chaos warband is on the planet," I said.  
  
"Easier said than down. I'd rather not tell the governor that," said Mr. Volk, grimacing.  
  
"Well. I suppose we could tell him that we encountered the Eldar advance scouts. That will at least put his defenses on high alert. As for the Inquisitor, we can leave him to draw his own conclusions."  
  
"All right. We should still go back and inspect Shield 213. I have an idea about what they might have been doing there."  
  
"First, we'll see this so-called battlefield. Do you think you can find it from this map?"  
  
  
  
It was immediately obvious to any observer that a battle had taken place here. In places, the rocks had been slagged and burned by the intense heat of alien weapons. A crazy pattern of craters, all different sizes and shapes, ringed a section of churned and broken rock. In a circular patch fifty meters in diameter, the solid basalt of the mountain had been ground into gravel, tiny flakes of rock coated with a clinging black grease that stank like burned flesh. In some places, the ground was littered with the thin, poisoned slivers of metal fired by Eldar pirate weapons.  
  
I could smell the remains of conflict: the sharp odor of burning metal, the slight sweetness of organic decay overlaid with ozone. Some places in the rock were discolored a deep brown, as if by blood, and fragments of armor could be found here and there. It was still very puzzling, though, for someone had picked up any dropped weapons or corpses and moved them. Nothing larger than shrapnel fragment could be found. Near the gravel pit, I found a set of enough prints, deep and seemingly made by a massive cloven-hoof. They went straight into the rock, and I imagined I could feel them still pulsing with heat, a week or more after the battle.  
  
Mr. Volk marched stolidly around the entire site in a circle, sniffing and cringing alternately. He stopped abruptly, tested the air again, and then called me over. He pointed out a narrow crevasse in the mountainside, then folded his arms. Sighing, I clambered into it, knowing that no amount of arguing would convince Volk to follow me.  
  
The crevasse was barely wide enough for me to clamber along, a foot on each side of the wall, moving slowly and checking the way before me. After about ten meters, I noticed the glint of metal in the shadow ahead. Moving forward a little, the full fetid stench hit me like a punch in the chest.  
  
Stacked like artillery shells in a depot, the bodies of a hundred or more Eldar pirates were jammed into a slight widening of the crevasse. Most were horribly mangled, armor shattered, limbs missing, in some places melted or burned or things far worse. I moved forward, pulling a strip of treated cloth from my pouch and wrapping it around my nose and mouth. The smell still pushed through, as if the foul taint of the creatures' souls leaked away when the body decayed.  
  
Most of them wore the same armor as the prisoner, and all of their weapons had been stacked haphazardly beneath the mountain of corpses. Using a set of pitons and a grapnel from my pack, I climbed far enough up the crevasse wall to see past the hideous mound. The wyches and incubi who are the best of the pirate's warriors were nowhere in evidence. I pulled out my data tablet, recorded a few images and notes, and then hurried back down the crevasse.  
  
Outside, I gulped fresh air and described the scene inside to Volk, who only shook his head and tugged at his nose.  
  
"That is the work of Chaos, if I have ever seen it. No way to say why they would have hidden the bodies like that. No sign of the Dracon or his retinue, you say?" said Mr. Volk. I shook my head.  
  
"The forces of Chaos are rarely subtle when they have brute strength on their side. I think we have hope yet, if they have not already begun to overrun the population centers of the southern continent."  
  
"We can hope for that much. A good reason to send the Inquisitor south again, to help arrange for defenses." With that, we collected the Sisters, who had been waiting outside the valley, and began marching back up the road towards Shield 213.  
  
  
  
Inquisitor Medvedev was waiting for us, face set in the carefully sculpted mask that every member of the Inquisition cultivated. Properly used, it gave the viewer a sense of nakedness, the idea that no secrets could be kept and absolution, however painful, was infinitely preferable to all other options. Medvedev, bless his earnest heart, merely looked angrily constipated.  
  
"There was no sign of any attacker but the alien raider," he said, voice measured and cautious, "and no sign that I could see of the garrison. There was, however," he continued, "a very peculiar room we found." At those words, I thought I caught a whiff of bile, the sickly remnants of the dry heaves. It had been a horrific sight.  
  
"There was not enough blood there to account for a full garrison, Inquisitor," I said, "I would not think it any more than three or four men. Have you found any documents or records?" Medvedev wiped his mouth slowly, thoughtfully.  
  
"I haven't looked at the Central Archive yet. We haven't found any data tablets or cards yet, though." I nodded, then drew the Inquisitor aside, out of earshot of the few Sisters of Battle milling about.  
  
"We encountered scouts, more Eldar pirates. We fear a larger force may be lurking, waiting for an opportunity to attack the Imperial Citizens in the south. I have no right to ask you, but someone must go and alert their defences. It would not hurt to be alert for the insidious influence of Chaos, either, for such trouble as I fear rarely comes alone." The Inquisitor looked put out for a moment, like a child pouting at being left out of the fun, and I remembered his relative youth. After a moment, though, he nodded tightly, and I saw the glint of determination in his eyes.  
  
"All right, Lisetz. If there really are scouts out there, the governor and guard garrisons must be on alert, and free of any weakness or indecision. This is my job,"  
  
"I knew I came to the right man, Inquisitor. Mr. Volk and I will keep the investigation going here, until it the enemy is found and dispatched." The Inquisitor nodded, clapped me on the shoulder, and went off to call for an air transport to pick him up and bring him back to the capitol city. 


End file.
